Evaluation of the effect of social media posts on dietary habits and body perception

Social media, which is one of the new communication methods that our information age has brought to our lives, has become an integral part of our daily life. The role of body image models in social media on the development and maintenance of women's body perception and concerns cannot be denied. In this study, the effects of women's exposure to social media on the relationship between body dissatisfaction, access to healthy nutrition information through social media, and the effect of social media on nutrition habits and diet were investigated. The study group consisted of 200 women aged between 18 and 40 who had at least one social media account and were diagnosed with no eating disorder. The data form of the research was prepared by the researcher and the Body Shape Questionnaire (BSQ-34) was applied via e-mail on the internet. The participants were divided into 2 groups and before the BSQ-34 questionnaire, 8 thin-ideal female photos from the study group and 8 neutral nature photographs from the control group were asked to be examined. In the results of working; BSQ-34 scores were found to be 100.6 ± 31.4 in the study group and 91.2 ± 31.0 in the control group. It was found that exposure to thin-ideal photographs significantly increased body dissatisfaction compared to exposure to neutral photographs (p <0.05). A significant relationship was found between the effect of diet on the account of the fit image of the social media and the status of dieting and the score of BSQ-34 (p <0.05). No significant relationship was found between the time spent on social media, meal skipping, dieting, frequency of dieting and BSQ-34 score (p> 0.05). No significant relationship was found between the healthy eating accounts followed on the social platforms and information about healthy nutrition (p> 0.05). It has been found that dietitians are the most frequently followed and most effective healthy diet in social media. Keywords: social media, body dissatisfaction, healthy eating, dieting, eating disorder